


There's No Church In The Wild

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Death of the Trees, Gen, as channeled via Elemmírë and Kanye West, shhhh that's totally a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 22:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8303833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: What, exactly, prompted the flight of the Noldor?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to the acoustive version on repeat for four hours as I wrote. So here, have a soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ah7AV7TV2w

The Valar controlled the crops of Valinor. Though the Light of the Trees encouraged the flowering of all things that grew in the Blessed Lands, it was Manwë who permitted the rains to go forth from Taniquetil, and Yavanna who set the times for ripening and harvesting; and at each first gathering of the season’s new fruits, Manwë made a high feast in celebration and thanksgiving. All the peoples of Valinor were summoned to the foot of the Holy Mountain, to thank Eru for the world He had given them; to pour their forth their gratitude in music and song in His praise.

This was now the hour, and the Noldor gathered with their brethren at the base of Taniquetil, for none must ignore the summons or else risk the wrath of the Powers. And Manwë had commanded Yavanna to halve the ripening season, and so she had done; also had Manwë decreed that this season’s feast must be more glorious than any that had yet been seen since the coming of the Eldar to Aman. For although the escape of Melkor heralded ill tidings to come, and none of the Valar might say what further sorrows their wayward brother might cause, at this time Manwë designed to pacify the fears that had taken root among the Eldar, and the evils that had arisen among the Noldor in particular; to show that none were as powerful, or as forgiving, as the Lords in the West.

So all were bid come to Taniquetil, and dance and make merry, and witness how Manwë would have the princes of the Noldor put aside their senseless griefs, and forget utterly the threat of their Enemy.

And so came the Vanyar, confused at the speed of the season but arrayed all the same in their whispering silks and their delicate hennas; there came the Noldor of Tirion, foreboding the urgency of the festival summons but attired all the same in their swirling robes and their silver ornaments. Among the Maiar of Aulë and Oromë they mingled, some select few called higher to sing and dance and smile before Manwë and Varda in their lofty halls, but most remaining upon the western slopes of Taniquetil, treading its greenery underfoot as they feasted in sight of the Trees. In that day the streets of Tirion were empty, its forges cold and its courts silent, and all the lands beyond Valmar were emptied.   

Alone in Aman did the Teleri in their harbors beyond the mountains, and the Noldorin exiles sequestered in Formenos, stay away. The Teleri reckoned little of Manwë’s times or seasons, depending instead on the relative apathy of Ulmo, and the Noldor of Formenos had little and less reason to love the Valar any longer, summons or not. Of their number came Fëanor alone, and he wore neither the colors of his house nor the silver of his father’s crest, but joined hand with Fingolfin before Manwë’s throne and nodded when the Lord of Airs said that the princes were reconciled.

It is remembered that, even as the princes stood before Manwë and received his words that their fight had ended, there came the Mingling, when the lights of both Laurelin and Telperion took equal place. It is remembered that the silent city of Valmar below Taniquetil was lit with a radiance of silver and gold, and the festival-goers looked from one to another in fear, for strange shadows coated their faces, as though a great fire lit their eyes and not the Trees.

And then, between one breath and the next –

the Light was quenched, and the world went dark.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

 And thus, the histories tell, the great darkness fell upon Valinor. Of the deeds of that day much is told in the _Aldudénië_ , that Elemmírë of the Vanyar made in memory and that is known to all the Eldar; yet no song or tale could contain all the grief and terror that befell in that first flush of darkness, and Elemmírë for all her craft knew not the whole of it.

 For the _Aldudénië_ tells how the first dark was not the flush of night, as the world has come to know that period of time when the moon and stars rule the sky, but that it was a Darkness that crept from the once-green mound of Ezellohar, that seeped through Valmar and up even Taniquetil in soaring towers of gloom, that trickled through Aman even unto the Teleri by the Sea.

And, says the Aldudénië, that Darkness was more than loss of Light, but a Thing with being of its own; made in malice and mockery of Light, with power to pierce and eye, and to enter heart and mind, and to strangle the will of even the most faithful.

 No tale could capture such a Thing, should it have once existed, nor possibly paint its consequences as those were lived.

And the only song to try, was never sung save among the Noldor.


	2. Chapter 2

_All of us in a mob / What’s a mob to a king?_

All song and dance ceased with the Light, and no sound could be heard. Then from afar there came a cold wind, blowing chill from the East of the world in the darkness beyond Valinor, and as it came through the passes of the mountains it carried with it the wailing of the Teleri like the shocked cries of gulls. Then the Maiar of Oromë and Aulë started, as if from a dream, and vanished from among the crowds, and there were only the Noldor and the Vanyar left amidst the remains of Manwë’s harvest festival.

Then there arose a great clamor and outcry among those still gathered on the slopes of the Holy Mountain, where some small rays of Varda’s stars struggled to penetrated the darkness. The Vanyar cried aloud to the Valar for aid, and the Noldor tried to fight their way forward, and above them Manwë’s winds rose, striving to disperse the darkness as though it were clouds. Amidst the confusion, no small number of festival-goers were thrown to the ground and trampled underfoot, or else pushed to the side of the slopes from whence they fell to the rocks below. Further clamor ascended from those at the foot of Taniquetil, where no light of star could reach and now the unlucky fell among their brethren, who could not see that they were Eldar, and so fell upon them with sticks and stones.

Betimes, the Valaróma sounded, and the Mountain shook beneath the hooves of the host of Oromë as his Maiar rode through the crowds, in hot pursuit of the Eldar knew not what. The hooves of their horses struck fire from the flint of Taniquetil, and this was the first light that returned to Valinor; yet its flames climbed amongst flesh and attire alike, and panic grew among the Eldar there gathered as Manwë’s winds only stirred the flames higher.  

 

_What’s a king to a god?_

When the light of the stars was increased enough to see by, the Valar went not among the grieving or the wounded, but took themselves to the Máhanaxar, the Ring of Doom, and summoned Fëanor to attend them. There they demanded of him the Silmarils, the labors of his heart, that they might stave the Darkness from the roots of the Trees, and Fëanor refused them with hot words.

But even as Fëanor found himself so beset, and the Eldar upon the Mountain fell upon one another in blindness and fear and flame, so there came messengers from Formenos. Their clothing was soiled from fear and from flight, and they bore new tidings of evil. For they told how the Darkness had come northward upon the great stronghold, and Melkor had cast Finwë to the ground and broken his body upon the point of a great black blade. They had no words to say that Finwë had been slain, for the tongue of those days had not terms for such grim deeds, though above the messengers even then, Eldar slayed and were slain; the first blood spilled in the Blessed Realm, upon the slopes of Taniquetil as the Valar gathered below in judgment.

And Fëanor in his grief and pain waited not for the messengers to tell that Melkor had broken the stronghold of his father’s house, nor to hear that the Silmarils had been taken, along with the other precious treasures that were hoarded in that place. Fëanor had risen, and lifting up his hands before Manwë he cursed Melkor with such words as had never been heard in that land before; and Fëanor cursed also the summons of Manwë and the hour in which Fëanor himself had come to Taniquetil, thinking that had he been at Formenos in that hour, his strength would have availed the defenders.

The Valar bestirred themselves only when they learned that the Silmarilli had been lost, since they had hoped to restrain their creator and break the jewels to try and revive the Trees. And in that hour Fëanor strode from the Ring of Doom, and walked away into the night; for his father and sons were dearer to him than the Light of Valinor or the peerless works of his hands, and he was resolved that none of his own would fall into the grasp of the Valar.

Then at last it was known, through the messenger of Formenos, that all the Darkness was due to the inveigles of Melkor; but he had long escaped Valinor, and whatever his accomplices were with him, so that the Valar deemed there nothing they might do. So they remained long seated in darkness in the Ring of Doom, and their Maiar about them, weeping.

 Upon the slopes of Taniquetil, the Noldor and the Vanyar came to realize that it was each other they fought, and so they worked together to fashion torches and restrain the fires for their own use. Then the Vanyar descended to the Ring to beseech the Valar once more, but the Noldor returned to Tirion, where they mourned the darkening of their fair city and the senseless loss of their king and so many of their own.

 Wailing arose from the streets and the courts of Tirion in that long night, the first that Valinor had ever known, as Fingolfin directed the people to tend to their wounded and seek out their lost.

No tale of the gods-fearing Vanyar could ever express the blow of first seeing fair skin twisted and marred by fire, or of the first realization that being tied to the world did not mean one could not be lost to its darker halls in death for a time.

 In the depths of that night Fëanor too returned to Tirion, and he called upon the grieving Noldor to come to the high court of Finwë his father upon the summit of Túna; the doom of his banishment to Formenos had not been lifted, and so Fëanor’s return was reckoned a rebellion against the Valar already. But swiftly there gathered a great multitude of the people, to hear what their banished prince might say, and Fingon his brother’s son was at the head of that gathering.

 It is remembered that the hill and the stairs to the summit of Túna that night were brightly lit with the light of many torches each borne in hand, and it is remembered that the streets climbing up to the courts of the King were filled with rippling murmurs as the prince ascended the steps. It is remembered that his seven sons arrayed themselves behind him, tall and proud in their bearing despite their weariness and shock, and it is remembered that when Fëanor spoke, both the people and the torches blazed.

 For any speech can hold great power over hearts as distraught as those of the Noldor were that night, and Fëanor needed no great mastery of words to remind the people of the wrongness in that they had just seen. That night was made a speech that the Noldor ever remembered; for fierce and few were Fëanor’s words, and filled with anger and pride, but ever after misremembered as madness and grief at his first sight of death.

 

_What’s a god to a non-believer?_

 That night Fëanor did claim the kingship of the Noldor, but he swore no hatred of his brothers or his brothers’ sons. His anguish for the theft of the Silmarils dimmed in light of his scorn for the Powers that would claim the jewels in his stead, to remake their own rule; and for all that the prince’s wrath and hate were given most to Melkor, or Morgoth as Fëanor now styled him, well-nigh all that he said could be traced to the Valar themselves. That night Fëanor called against the Powers for their failure; a subject that little might the Valar wish to record, that well might they prefer to forget.

  “Why, O people of Noldor,” Fëanor cried out in his anger, “should we serve the jealous Valar? They have shown they cannot keep us, nor even their own realm, secure from their Enemy, and though he be now their foe, is he not of their number and their kind? Enemy they call him, and evil decry his deeds, but only because these latest deeds serve not their purpose. Did Morgoth act more to Manwë’s liking, be sure that he would still be styled kin, no matter his affronts or his misdeeds toward us, their supposed charges!”

 It is remembered that Fingon his brother’s son cried out in agreement, and that a thousand voices swelled to support him; that the flames in the courts before Fëanor spread from hand to hand as more torches were lit, and the fire shared amongst his people.

 “Vengeance calls me hence, but more: rage at my blindness, that I saw not the Valar for what they are – our defenses in name and convenience more than in fact – and fury at its consequences, that we must meet in secret and in darkness, in anguish and in loss. And yet! Even were it otherwise, should we dwell longer in the same land under the kin of our oppressors? For have you not seen the terror, now? Can you not look about you, and find in this crowd a space where should stand your own father, your own brother or sister or mother or child, dashed to pieces upon the Mountain or else lying in groans upon a dark pallet somewhere in the ruins of our city?”

 The _Aldudénië_ of the Vanyar records nothing of this by the last of the prince’s speech.

 “Yet I am not the only valiant one in this, a valiant people. Have we not all lost our King? And what else have we lost, cooped here in a narrow land between the mountains and the sea? Here once was light and the promise of light, which the Valar begrudged to us in Middle-earth; and so we came here, assured of their goodwill and a place in that light. But now darkness levels all. Shall we mourn here forever: a shadowy folk, haunting the mists and the ruins of our works, shedding vain tears in the thankless sea? Or shall we return to our home?”

 The _Aldudénië_ of the Vanyar spares but a footnote for the roar of the crowd; yet that night, the torches guttered over the faces of the Noldor as that people realized they might seize their chances in their own hands.

 “In Cuiviénen, sweet ran the waters under unclouded stars!” cried Fëanor. “Wide lands lay about, where a free people walked then, and might walk again. There those lands, those waters, still lie, awaiting us who forsook them in our folly. Come away with me; we have lost enough here.”

  

_Who don’t believe in anything?_

Red as blood shone the swords of Fëanor and his seven sons as they were drawn and brandished in the glare of the torches. White as the snow of Taniquetil’s peaks glimmered the grimaces of those sons as together they swore an oath to pursue their one enemy to the shores of Middle-earth, and to resist and spite the efforts of the Valar to corral them. Gold as a Sun not yet created glowed the ornaments in Fingon’s hair, and Aredhel’s cloak, as they leapt straightway to the side of their kin and swore the selfsame oath.

 Bright and harsh shone the torches as was sworn an oath that none could break, by the name even of Eru Ilúvatar, calling the Everlasting Darkness upon themselves should they fall into the same abuses as had the Valar. Manwë himself they named in witness, laughing, and Varda, and the peaks of Taniquetil that had so recently seen the blood of their people spilled upon its hallowed stones.

Thus spoke Maedhros and Maglor and Celegorm, Curufin and Caranthir, Amrod and Amras, princes of the Noldor; thus followed Fingon and Aredhel, high nobles of the same people; and many more quailed at the resolve of spirit it took to speak such words where still the Valar might hear them.  

 And at length, after debate that the Valar’s high places vindicated any use of power they so chose, Fëanor prevailed; and the greater part of the Noldor there assembled were set aflame with the desire to be gone from that land.

 Somewhere beyond the Sea there lay a shore that groaned beneath their Enemy’s footfalls, and a land where their king’s murderer walked free. But that first night, the Noldor saw their freedom in the light of their torches and the faces of their princes, in the milling ranks of the Vanyar gathering beyond Tirion’s boundaries and the Teleri still languishing by the shore. There would be no respite in the wild, but then, they needed none.

 

_We make it out alive_  
All right, all right  
No church in the wild

**Author's Note:**

> yes, much of this stems directly from Ch. 8 "Of The Darkening of Valinor" and Ch. 9 "Of The Flight of the Noldor," right on down to the language. It was fun (but challenging) to find out how exactly I could mimic Tolkien's style, though you should definitely come and visit me [on tumblr](http://raisingcain-onceagain.tumblr.com/) if I got anything egregiously wrong. . .


End file.
